In the vein of "pointing out corruption that somehow magically hasn't been noticed or posted about by the presumably non-partisan posters on this board...":
How many of you have heard about our illustrious Dem Senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, who has been sitting on a military appropriations board for years awarding contracts to corporations in which her husband has significant financial interest? This story gives many of the details. There's more if you search around. Interstingly enough, it's almost impossible to find even a mention of this on *any* of the mainstream media sites. I'm sure they have it buried somewhere, perhaps in a comments/blog section, but no articles and certainly nowhere near the front page of course.
But hey! The culture of corruption was all about Republicans, right? And the media has been fair in reporting all of it as well. Afterall, we can indict some guy from Texas for maybe shuffling money around between one PAC and another, but no one notices that a woman sits on a board and awards contracts to her own husband?
Where's the media on this? Where's the outrage? Heck. Even during the whole story about the veterans hospitals being run down, no one noticed that the woman in charge of contracting those services gave them to her husband? Maybe the billions of dollars they profited by this might have come at the cost of those soldiers? Hmmm...
But Cheney's connection to Halliburton matters more, right? Afterall, he's a Republican and that's what's important.
Edited, Jun 20th 2007 7:02pm by gbaji
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King Nobby wrote:
More words please
gbaji wrote:
Interstingly enough, it's almost impossible to find even a mention of this on *any* of the mainstream media sites.
GASP! Not even FOX!? Fair and balanced my ***! FUcking Libs!
Maybe there just isn't a story there, ya ****.
The Glorious GitSlayer wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Interstingly enough, it's almost impossible to find even a mention of this on *any* of the mainstream media sites.
Gbaji's story wrote:
Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute).
While FOX was sleeping, liberals were having to dig up this story!!
This is the second or third time Gbaji has tried to throw this story and make it stick. I haven't done any independent research but the rather sensationalistic tone of the linked article combined with the last of interest in any major media outlet leads me to believe that this isn't the story the blogs and 3rd tier news columns would have you believe. To ask the foremost obvious question -- why wasn't there a complaint from the Republican majority in the subcommittee since 2002? Were they somehow not aware that Feinstein's husband was with this company? Were they beguiled by Feinstein's mind control ray into giving no-bid contracts to Feinstein's husband and saying nothing at all about it? Why aren't we raking Kay Bailey Hutchison over the coals? Sure, we keep calling Feinstein a "ranking member" but Hutchinson was the Majority member and actual Chairwoman of the committee. Boy, she must really suck at her job to let Feinstein walk all over her, huh?
Or could it be.. maybe... that there's a lot more to the story which makes it perhaps less damning and sensational. And perhaps less attractive to the "mainstream media"?
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
Of course it wasn't attractive to them. It involved a prominent Democratic female.
Duh.
Duh.
Dianne Feinstein's husband can get rich if Cheney's other wife, Halliburton. can literally continue to make a killing with their generous government contracts.
And where the hell are you getting this "twice as many liberals are under investigation" crap?
With the exception of Bush getting caught doing a male page in the dumper smack dab in the middle of the oval office on a Sunday, I really doubt anything the Dems do can compare to their Pubby counterparts as of late. Ya, the left is every bit as corrupt as the right, but in recent years the right does it bigger and better.
And where the hell are you getting this "twice as many liberals are under investigation" crap?
With the exception of Bush getting caught doing a male page in the dumper smack dab in the middle of the oval office on a Sunday, I really doubt anything the Dems do can compare to their Pubby counterparts as of late. Ya, the left is every bit as corrupt as the right, but in recent years the right does it bigger and better.
"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
But hey! The culture of corruption was all about Republicans, right? And the media has been fair in reporting all of it as well.
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lets see, whos in the spotlight? some democratic senator from a state with a republican govenor?
or the vice president of the whole damn country?
aha, its a liberal conspiracy created by the entire media organization....except Fox News, of coarse, whom we all know is "fair and ballanced...".
umm, would those be the same liberal conspiracy organizations who hounded President Clinton day and night for lying about a ********? or was that "fair adn ballanced" reporting because they targeted a democrat?
a news flash. they go after the story with the most bang for the buck. dem or reepub. right now, it is a pool of sharks circeling this addministraition to the exclusion of all else. cheney will just get more "wow" right now than some unknown dem senator from a republican controlled state.
no conspiracy. just more bang for the buck to go after the bigger fish.
if your trying to tell us dem politicians are in it for the lobbiest dollars and getting kickbacks by handing our tax dollars to their buds.......hello McFly, "POLITICIAN?". its what they do, dem and repub alike. you think they are in it for the chump change they get as a sallary? ROFL. its a JOB, just like all other JOBS. they are in it for the money. ALL of them.
but dont worry, when the repubs kicked kicked out of the whitehouse for ******** this country up so much, you can damn well bet the spotlight will be on the dems again, and life will be "fair and ballanced" again in your little republican world.
cliff notes, stick around for another year and a half, and no one will care about the repubs robbing tax payers blind again. the dems will be in the spotlight.
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lets see, whos in the spotlight? some democratic senator from a state with a republican govenor?
or the vice president of the whole damn country?
aha, its a liberal conspiracy created by the entire media organization....except Fox News, of coarse, whom we all know is "fair and ballanced...".
umm, would those be the same liberal conspiracy organizations who hounded President Clinton day and night for lying about a ********? or was that "fair adn ballanced" reporting because they targeted a democrat?
a news flash. they go after the story with the most bang for the buck. dem or reepub. right now, it is a pool of sharks circeling this addministraition to the exclusion of all else. cheney will just get more "wow" right now than some unknown dem senator from a republican controlled state.
no conspiracy. just more bang for the buck to go after the bigger fish.
if your trying to tell us dem politicians are in it for the lobbiest dollars and getting kickbacks by handing our tax dollars to their buds.......hello McFly, "POLITICIAN?". its what they do, dem and repub alike. you think they are in it for the chump change they get as a sallary? ROFL. its a JOB, just like all other JOBS. they are in it for the money. ALL of them.
but dont worry, when the repubs kicked kicked out of the whitehouse for ******** this country up so much, you can damn well bet the spotlight will be on the dems again, and life will be "fair and ballanced" again in your little republican world.
cliff notes, stick around for another year and a half, and no one will care about the repubs robbing tax payers blind again. the dems will be in the spotlight.
Not to be obvious shadow, but the executive branch of the government doesn't get to determine funding. That would fall to the legistlative branch.
So yeah. A Senator is in a greater position to pass money on to friends and family then the Vice President is.
And to answer you Joph. The bloggers and talk radio folks have been harping on this for the last 6 months or so. My understanding is that no-one knew the financial relationship until then, largely because Feinstein didn't report it as she was supposed to do, nor recuse herself as she was supposed to do (and I might point out as VP Cheney *did* do with regard to Halliburton and he divested himself of financial interest in the company once the decision was made, something Feinstein didn't even come close to doing).
As to why no one's done much about this? Well. Some has been done. She's finally removed herself from that board as a result of the interest. However, the reason nothing else has occured is because in the legal system, the squeeky wheel gets the grease. If the public is not made aware, no outcry occurs, and the people in charge tend to just sweep it under the rug.
If you doubt that media attention affects how legal processes occur, one need only look at Paris Hilton for good proof. Or Mark Foley. Or Tom Delay. Or Libby. If the media chooses to make something a "big deal", it gets attention legally. If they don't, people get away with the same offenses with a slap on the wrist.
Edited, Jun 21st 2007 5:10pm by gbaji
So yeah. A Senator is in a greater position to pass money on to friends and family then the Vice President is.
And to answer you Joph. The bloggers and talk radio folks have been harping on this for the last 6 months or so. My understanding is that no-one knew the financial relationship until then, largely because Feinstein didn't report it as she was supposed to do, nor recuse herself as she was supposed to do (and I might point out as VP Cheney *did* do with regard to Halliburton and he divested himself of financial interest in the company once the decision was made, something Feinstein didn't even come close to doing).
As to why no one's done much about this? Well. Some has been done. She's finally removed herself from that board as a result of the interest. However, the reason nothing else has occured is because in the legal system, the squeeky wheel gets the grease. If the public is not made aware, no outcry occurs, and the people in charge tend to just sweep it under the rug.
If you doubt that media attention affects how legal processes occur, one need only look at Paris Hilton for good proof. Or Mark Foley. Or Tom Delay. Or Libby. If the media chooses to make something a "big deal", it gets attention legally. If they don't, people get away with the same offenses with a slap on the wrist.
Edited, Jun 21st 2007 5:10pm by gbaji
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
gbaji wrote:
My understanding is that no-one knew the financial relationship until then, largely because Feinstein didn't report it as she was supposed to do, nor recuse herself as she was supposed to do
The "No one knew! No one could have ever known!" is a thin excuse to try to pile on Feinstein and ignore the reality that, at best, nothing wrong was really happening and, at worst, the Republican leadership of the committee was either retarded or grossly negligent and awarded billions of dollars in contracts to companies with no idea who owns or was running them.
And this still doesn't excuse why MILCON was just handing out no-bid contracts unless they felt damn confident that the company in question was capable of performing the work.
Edited, Jun 21st 2007 8:26pm by Jophiel
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
Hey, here's a story from 1992 in the San Francisco Business Times!Well, I can see how this was super-secret buried information. I suppose that no one in MILCON ever met Feinstein's husband though or had any idea what sort of work he did. She probably just passed herself off as single.
Quote:
SAN FRANCISCO -- Continuing its ascendancy among environmental cleanup firms, the once-humbled URS Corp. on Tuesday received what could be its largest contract since 1990, when it undertook its second major restructuring in three years.
[...]
In 1990, the company changed its name back to URS and took several steps to reduce debt, including raising additional equity and restating earnings for previous years.
On Tuesday, the company announced that its URS Consultants subsidiary was selected by the U.S. Air Force for a two-year contract, worth as much as $100 million, for environmental cleanup at the Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York State.
[...]
URS' turnaround was largely made possible by a bailout from San Francisco's Richard C. Blum & Associates, which provided equity and helped the company negotiate concessions from bondholders and Wells Fargo Bank.
Blum & Associates still controls about 39 percent of URS stock, although on Jan. 29 The Fund American Cos. Inc. of Norwich, Vt., reported that it was transferring 826,323 shares, or 12.7 percent of the company, from the Novato Partners II fund controlled by Blum, into its own name.
[...]
In 1990, the company changed its name back to URS and took several steps to reduce debt, including raising additional equity and restating earnings for previous years.
On Tuesday, the company announced that its URS Consultants subsidiary was selected by the U.S. Air Force for a two-year contract, worth as much as $100 million, for environmental cleanup at the Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York State.
[...]
URS' turnaround was largely made possible by a bailout from San Francisco's Richard C. Blum & Associates, which provided equity and helped the company negotiate concessions from bondholders and Wells Fargo Bank.
Blum & Associates still controls about 39 percent of URS stock, although on Jan. 29 The Fund American Cos. Inc. of Norwich, Vt., reported that it was transferring 826,323 shares, or 12.7 percent of the company, from the Novato Partners II fund controlled by Blum, into its own name.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
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